the retro version of the future was soooo much better

Wired.com - Disney Revives 'House of the Future'. Disney is creating a new House of the Future display featuring these amazing features: "Lights and thermostats will automatically adjust when people walk into a room. Closets will help pick out the right dress for a party. Countertops will be able to identify groceries set on them and make menu suggestions."

The 5,000-square-foot home, scheduled to open in May, will look like a suburban tract home outside. But inside it will feature hardware, software and touch-screen systems that could simplify everyday living.

"A suburban tract home"? Man, the future sucks.

I'll give you a hint: it ends in disappointment

I was awake for most of the night, but now that it's daytime--and work-time!--I'm exhausted. Not even coffee can help me now. I sometimes have these nightmares that I awaken from slowly, choking on sobs--and then fall back to sleep before I even stop crying. It hardly sets a good precedent for the day to come.

My dad is coming to visit me today, and hopefully bringing a suitcase full of stuff I ordered online and had shipped to my parents'. Lately, I've been compulsively shopping online when I get bored at work. All I can do is try to channel the acquisitive instinct into something constructive, by buying things I legitimately need (or at least, legitimately sort of need). So I bought a gift for a friend who's expecting a baby, and a new bathing suit (necessitated by the fact that I've actually been swimming regularly again, yay!), clothes I can wear to work, and yesterday, this print:

I absolutely love it. There are more available from shauno.etsy.com.

One of the things I've been ignoring about Thing-A-Day is the weekly themes, of which there are several. One of the themes for this week is "spying," so today I'm going to make something with this article I read today: Bush Presses House on Surveillance Bill. I shall channel my political hostility and alienation into craft!

A couple cool links from yesterday and today:
Notable registrants of the WWI Draft [including Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Sinclair Lewis] - from the National Archives of the US of A
1975 and the Changes to Come - a Flickr photoset of scans from a 1962 book by that title. The past's conception of the future is fascinating. In 1962, apparently, 1975 held promise of ultrasonic dishwashers, among other things!

1975: And the Changes To Come, originally uploaded by dbostrom.

The future is an exciting place, friends.

Not that I'm saying it's a BAD plan, exactly...

Oh yeah: I feel obliged to mention that last week the Alberta Government released their climate change action plan. In case you missed it--and why wouldn't you?--their plan suggests cutting emissions by 50%-- by 2050. Kyoto it ain't. Oh, and pumping greenhouse gases into underground rock formations, and I am not even kidding. This "carbon capture and storage" accounts for over two-thirds of the planned "reductions". (PS. Pumping something underground is not the same as reducing it.) Doesn't this sound like the premise of a sci-fi thriller movie of some kind? 200 years in the future, only 1 man (hopefully Will Smith) can save us after the decision to fill up underground caves and porous rock with poisonous gases somehow backfired.

Le sigh.

A man built a floating personal island with a frame of bamboo and recycled plastic bottles. This is an absolutely amazing project in and of itself (and the fact that it is reminiscent of the Disney Swiss Family Robinson treehouse doesn't hurt), but it also seems like it could be a precursor of the future. The more people there are on the planet, and the less land there is, the more likely it will become that we will be living in Waterworld. Only, hopefully, without Kevin Costner. Everyone living on little floating islands = sounds OK. Having to live in an overwrought, badly written movie = nightmare. (Also, having an adorable family dog on the island = Cool. Brawling with pirates = cooler.)

I am totally ziplisting Swiss Family Robinson.

I had Swiss Chalet for lunch, which I deeply, deeply regret. Doesn't Swiss Chalet seem like one of those franchises that should have gone out of business a long time ago? Now I feel both still hungry and vaguely ill.

Anti-inflammatory remarks

Every five minutes, someone else announces the death of books. It hasn't happened in the past thousand years, though, so I'm not that worried.

(Also, is Samuel Beckett's portrait at the top of this article meant to suggest something about what we cultural ingrates should be reading? Waiting for the renaissance of humourless, progressive modern drama is like waiting for... nah. Never mind. Too easy.)

"Pimpin' got harder 'cause hos got smarter..." -Wyclef Jean

The key to my ongoing happiness is to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. I have this tendency to FREAK OUT. It's something my dog, Toby, and I have in common, and I'd like to think it endears us to those who love us, but it can be kind of intense.

I have all these movies--I should WATCH THEM! I have all this fabric, and a sewing machine, and a collection of vintage buttons--I should make something! I have some mushrooms in my fridge--I should make beef Meghanoff! I have a Warcraft account again--I should get to level 61! I have a pool in my building--I should go for a swim! You know? Like, what's my problem? (Although, not so much that last one. My dress shoes tore up my feet again, and exposing these blisters to saltwater does not seem advisable.)

I always dreamed of doing nothing, and now my dreams are coming true. I must remember the two quotes that define my professional aspirations:

"It's not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It's about all of us. I don't know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don't know, maybe it was just shock and it's wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die - Michael, we don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements." -Peter, Office Space

"I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed. You know, as a career. I don’t want to do that." –Lloyd, Say Anything

But swimming, cooking, sewing, reading, and watching movies are all fine, see what I mean?
People of earth, LATER.

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Currently listening to: Tricot Machine - Pas fait en chocolat
via FoxyTunes

My favourite lolcat

It's just so cute, internets! Normally I try to avoid posting pictures of kittens... especially kittens that aren't mine. (Which is all the kittens, because I don't have any kittens, because kittens are cute but they grow into cats and I don't like cats.) But have to make an exception for this. Plus, the idea of embarking on some kind of epic quest with that kitten (CLEARLY a sissy) is ludicrous! I'm sorry, but it's true.

So, my day is progressing as usual. I have made two trips to Tim Hortons already, but I think I'm done for the day. Also, the elevator is broken, so every time I go downstairs I have to come back up... six flights. For an expedition like that, you need some kind of heroic kitten. I shall go to my class tonight, and it shall be no more or less boring than usual, I expect. I keep expecting some kind of theoretical framework for records management to emerge... and it just doesn't happen. More insignificant detail builds on the original, insignificant-detail foundation. Stupid last class of my degree.

I saw a job ad yesterday for a 12 hour a week job at a library. I immediately whipped out the microsoft calculator to check if I could live on such a small amount of money. The answer: no, but almost. If I were to get some other, similarly slacker job a couple days a week, I would have enough money to live on (and make student loan payments, natch). How much of a loser would I be if I got a master's degree, then spent my whole working life working part-time jobs in order to spend the least possible amount of time at work? I mean, on the Official Loser Scale, where 1 is, I don't know, Shaft, and 10 is Comic Book Guy from Simpsons?

Yeah, that's what I thought. OK, fine, I'll keep looking.

Well, good morning, internets. I trust you slept well.

The computer helpdesk where I work in the afternoons is so over-air-conditioned that I must bring my armwarmers to work. Or at least, that's my excuse. They are somber, black work-appropriate armwarmers though, so fear not. I would never commit the faux pas of wearing garish armwarmers to work.

Meghan and I wanted Babel yesterday and I liked it, although I didn't love it. Jon didn't really like it though, and I was at a loss to defend it. Sometimes it scares me that I might like movies simply because I'm pretentious, and they fit into my pretentious identity. Although, as Meg pointed out, "You also like lots of things that are dumb!" And that is very true.

I am frightened by how quickly time seems to go by, now that I am working. Every time I have a weekend (which I get very excited about), the weekend seems to be over immediately, and then I have to work again--but only for five days. And then it's the weekend! And then, even in this relatively constrained example, two weeks have already gone by-- out of the 4500 or so I have on this planet, total. I should be accomplishing more, or at least doing what I am doing but in less time, or something. Although not playing Warcraft is a good start.

I need: more money, more coffee, more sleep, more email, more regular mail, and a shower. I could also use some pizza, and a trip to the fabric store. But I believe these are all achievable goals. I have bright hope for the future, internets.

"everything around her is a silver pool of light" -KT Tunstall

I collect websites about abandoned urban spaces. This is related to my obsession with the end of the world, or with apocalyptic events which pretty much put an end to humanity in general--an obsession which is strong enough to mean I even enjoyed watching The Day After Tomorrow. (As well as some better end-of-the-world obsessed things, like Douglas Coupland's Life After God.) Thus: urban curators, the vanishing point and abandoned places.

"The SCREAM meme suggests that we're so ironic that we can't even take our own apocalypse-- our lurking sense, on the eve of the future, of social disintegration and simmering discontent-- seriously. This is the moment Walter Benjamin warned us of, when humankind's 'self-alienation' reaches 'such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.'" -Fighting the Forces

"The dead rose! We should've at least had an assembly!" -Xander, Buffy

[from the archives]

Post-humanity

I wish I could tell you where this graphic comes from, but I can't. I myself know not; stumbleupon found it. I have always wondered this, though; I feel fascinated.

There is a Douglas Coupland book where he talks about the point, now crossed, where humanity's effect on the planet becomes irreversible. I tried to find it and failed. So just imagine a Douglas Coupland quote here:

In the year 2041...

The clock on this school computer is set to March 21, 2041. All the security certificates on the WHOLE INTERNET are expired, not surprisingly. In the year 2041 I will be 58. I had better be done my MLIS by that time.

OpenCongress: using the collective intelligence of the World Wide Information Superhighway (The W-WIS) to keep democracy responsive and responsible. It's a nice idea. Does it actually work? I have no idea.

library-scented perfume. Point of clarification: is it actually made out of old books? Because that is sort of gross. I mean, I like the smell of old books as much as the next library-ladder-craving, card-catalogue-using, subject-heading-applying dork, but that doesn't mean I want to smell like that all day long. [Via 50 books]